Why shop ethically?

Shopping
ethically for food is generally well accepted, we regularly buy free range
eggs, organic food, British/local produce, seasonal fruit and vegetables as
well as popular fair trade foods such as bananas and chocolate.

Somehow
when it comes to fashion the message hasn’t quite got across that buying mass
produced cheap clothing & accessories is having a negative impact on the
rest of the world.

The
problem is that we have come to accept “fast fashion” as the norm and expect to
be able to purchase our clothes at a bargain price and then discard them next season.
A century ago clothes were well made and repaired again and again before being
discarded.
Now
we view clothes as disposable, which all has a negative impact upon the
environment and workers in developing countries.

Some of the problems fast
fashion creates include:

1. Poor working conditions – Workers are often made to work in
unsuitable and even dangerous environments. In 2013 there was the Rana Plaza disaster,
when a building which housed various clothing factories collapsed in Bangladesh
and killed 1,134 people

2. Low pay - Hourly wages in garment factories around the world are
often less than 50p. Almost ¾ of the world’s clothing exports are made in
developing countries. With many factories in developing countries competing for
valuable contracts with garment companies, prices and production times have
been pushed down and down.

3.Throwaway society - The UK creates more than 1.8 million tonnes of
clothing waste each year, which is approximately the weight of 100 pairs of
jeans per household.

4.
Wasteful manufacturing - An estimated 400 billion square meters of
textiles are produced annually, of which 60 billion square meters are left on
the cutting room floor.

5.
Unrecyclable textiles - Only one per cent of collected clothing
from charities can be used as recycled fibres, but 95% of discarded clothing
can be upcycled which also takes less energy than recycling.